whatever reading room: April 2021

πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα

[Day 1]

﴾ Day ١﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

    summary (executive)
       ·
    • why do successful companies fail?
    • the other question, which was the difficult one for me was
       why had I missed this problem
    • the problems were there, but they don't have to look at them at that time, because they let the success - they let that get in the way of diving deep, and
finding the problems.
    • so even though I was kind of aware of this problem, I been caught by it, too; so just being aware of it wasn't enough; so that the next
       · (Ed Catmull, Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small,   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc, 54:10, published on Jul 28, 2009)
       ·

    • when a new business is first emerging, rarely is it possible to know the right strategy at the beginning

    • they became very very successful, then a tough thing happens because when the original growth game ends and for intel the original growth game is coming to an end, companies find it very difficult now to flip back around and let the next solution to the next generation products bubble up again from the troops, because the troops have developed such a reverence for the wisdom of the CEO (top people), they think that's where the strategic direction should come from, and in a context where things are very unresolved, usually the CEOs find it impossible to know what the right direction is and you've got gotta to let new solutions to the new problems bubble up from below;

       · (Dealing with the dangers of success | Clayton Christensen | 2003; youtube.com | 38:35 | published on Jan 25, 2021)
       ·

    • there is no data about the future, there is only data about the past
      the problem with that arrangement is that, you got to look into the future about which there is no data.

    • you need to understand what is the job they are trying to get done that cause them to come here to hire a milkshake,

    • you need to setup a completely independent business, because you need a different business model; ...
      you will never get an email saying, guys, we got disrupted; it's a process, not an event; if you wait until this is in trouble, then the game is over; so you have to do it in parallel; ...

       · (Clayton Christensen | how will you measure your life? | LinkedIn speaker; youtube.com | LinkedIn | 1:12:46 | published on <8 years ago>)
       ·

    • "Those who study genetics avoid studying humans," he noted. "Because new generations come along only every thirty years or so, it takes a long time to understand the cause and effect of any changes. Instead, they study fruit flies, because they are conceived, born, mature, and die all within a single day. If you want to understand why something happens in business, study the disk drive industry. Those companies are the closest things to fruit flies that the business world will ever see."
       · (Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, copyright © 1997, 2000, 658.4 Christen, p.3)

    • With Drosophila [fruit flies], one need not wait for entire growing season to learn the results of genetic crosses; one can get a new generation every ten days.
       · (Evelyn Fox Keller, A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock, 1983)
       ·

    • A really good investigation does not necessarily lead to the implementation of really good countermeasures. In fact, the opposite may be true if you look at figure 11.1. Really good investigations may reveal systemic shortcomings that necessitate fundamental interventions which are too expensive or sensitive to be accepted.
       · (Sidney Dekker, The field guide to human error investigations, 2002)
       ·

    • You must understand your mistakes.
      Study the hell out of them. You're not going to have the chance of making the same mistake again ── you can't step into the river again at the same place and the same time ── but you will have the chance of making a similar mistake.

    • It's not enough to make time for your children.
      There are certain stages in their lives when you have to give them the time when they want it.
      You can't run your family like a company. It doesn't work.

       · (Andy Grove: what I've learned | by Mike Sager | Jan 29, 2007 | esquire.com )
       ·

    • what tends to happen is when there is a growing gap between, a dissonance between the actions of people who are close to the actions and the comprehension (understanding) and statements of senior management, like myself.

    • let experimentation take place and watch them like a hawk, and see which one get traction

    • start doing experimentation when your business is strong

    • then we put him on the new area and guess what, the new area is not going to succeed. Now is it not going to succeed because it was a bad idea in the first place? Or is it not going to succeed because we put our second class people on developing it? That's how it goes in real life.

    • we under invest in experimentation. In a more demanding business environment, it would have been a bit too late.

       · (youtube.com | Andy Grove | MIT)
       ·

    • Let me switch to another metaphor. You are in the prow of a ship with Bill Gates, Scott McNealy and others. The ship is moving through a fog, the fog of technology. You can see outlines of a city not far away. That's how this game is shaping up. The outline is not very good through the fog. But it's not just trying to make sense of what you see. What you see keeps changing, with the sense that other people are making of it.

    • Who's going to do well there? The people who do well are the ones who go in with a deeper sense of understanding. There's no getting it right. The challenge is a cognitive one.
       It is the same challenge when it comes to strategy in high tech. We're all staring at the same game, trying to figure it out. But it's not like poker or roulette, where there's an official correct strategy. The game's ill defined. The people who do well, and here I would mention Bill Gates, are the people with better vision and cognition, who can sort of understand how things will shape up. But again, there's no correct answer.

    • So the real players in these markets, the people who are very good, are those who come in and can see that suddenly the game has changed.
       To repeat, then, the strategic challenge here is a cognitive one.

    • Now I would say, assume there's a situation, how do players cognitively deal with it? In other words, what frameworks do they wheel up to understand the situation, like a Bosnia? Do they wheel up an inferior framework and say this is just like Palestine in the 1940's, this is just like whatever? We tend to shoehorn situations into a previous cognitive framework and we do that prematurely, and when we do we nearly always lose.

    • Confusion means having no cognitive framework, and that is better than having a wrong cognitive framework, which is what happens if you prematurely close in on an understanding. There's no correct understanding, but there are very bad ones.
       So the challenge in Bosnia is making sense. It's spending a lot of time figuring out what on earth is going on. The challenge is not optimizing U.N. troop placements. That has to come after you make sense.

    • The challenge is similar when it comes to strategy and management in technology. My friend John Seely Brown at Xerox PARC put it this way: "In the old economy, the challenge for management is to make product. Now the challenge for management is to make sense."

       · An Interview with W. Brian Arthur

            by Joel Kurtzman
         April 1, 1998
           http://www.strategy-business.com/article/16402?gko=8af4f
           http://www.strategy-business.com/article/16402?gko=8af4f
         April 1, 1998 / Second Quarter 1998 / Issue 11
          (originally published by Booz & Company)
    •
       ·
    •
       ·
Abbreviated source & references (redacted, consolidated):
    • Ed Catmull, Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small,   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc, 54:10, published on Jul 28, 2009.
       · youtube video
    • Dealing with the dangers of success | Clayton Christensen | 2003; youtube.com | 38:35 | published on Jan 25, 2021.
       · youtube video
    • Clayton Christensen | how will you measure your life? | LinkedIn speaker; youtube.com | LinkedIn | 1:12:46 | published on <8 years ago>.
       · youtube video
    • Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, copyright © 1997, 2000, 658.4 Christen, p.3.
       · book (biblio)
    • Evelyn Fox Keller, A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock, 1983.
       · book (biblio)
    • Sidney Dekker, The field guide to human error investigations, 2002.
       · book (biblio)
    • Andy Grove: what I've learned | by Mike Sager | Jan 29, 2007 | esquire.com
       · article
    • youtube.com | Andy Grove | MIT
       · youtube video
    • An Interview with W. Brian Arthur
           by Joel Kurtzman
         April 1, 1998
           http://www.strategy-business.com/article/16402?gko=8af4f
           http://www.strategy-business.com/article/16402?gko=8af4f
         April 1, 1998 / Second Quarter 1998 / Issue 11
          (originally published by Booz & Company)
        · published interview

• The mythical man-month : essays on software engineering, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. -- Anniversary ed., © 1985, Software engineering, p.49, p.15..
· book (biblio)

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[Day 2]

54:10
Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Published on Jul 28, 2009
I want to start off with two questions
   why do successful companies fail?
   our central problem is not finding good people, it's finding good ideas

03:22 our central problem
03:25 is not finding good people, it's finding
03:28 good ideas

https://youtu.be/k2h2lvhzMDc?t=289
04:49   there were always problems; people felt
04:51   comfortable about coming in and
04:53   expressing the problems, we couldn't fix
04:55   every problem, but it's important to hear

04:57   them; the other thing we had was

https://youtu.be/k2h2lvhzMDc?t=737
12:13   the other question which was the
12:17   difficult one for me was why had I
12:19   missed this problem

https://youtu.be/k2h2lvhzMDc?t=759
12:35   new people that came into an existing
12:38   structure, they accepted it, they were
12:40   used to reporting to producers, and if
12:48   you didn't like it, we only had a job for
12:50   four months, and just put up with it;
12:51   you'd move on, so there was no reason
12:54   for them the complaint; just put up with it

https://youtu.be/k2h2lvhzMDc?t=802
13:22   fundamental problems I think with
13:25   companies and that is that “success hides
13:28   problems”. it happens to a lot of us in
it happens to a lot of us in our personal lives
with our health.
when we're healthy, there may be a lot of things that
are bad for us, but our health lets us get away with
doing stuff that's bad for us.
then years later, the logic of that time doesn't hold up,
but we do that.
it happens with a lot of companies.
it happens with state, local, and national governments.
when you're healthy, and you've got the resources,
you don't need to address the problems.
they were actually very healthy, and they're
very strong.
and the problems were there, but they don't have to look
at them at that time, because they let the success
they let that get in the way of diving deep, and
finding the problems.

https://youtu.be/k2h2lvhzMDc?t=844
14:04   the problems were there
14:06   but they didn't have to look at them at
14:07   that time, they let the success and they
14:10   were successful that time they let that
14:12   get in the way of diving deep and
14:14   defining the problems; so even though I
14:18   was kind of aware of this problem, I been
14:20   caught by it, too; so just being aware of
14:22   it wasn't enough; so that the next
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[Day 3]

Intel
intel (integrated electronics)

how strategy developed

(intended strategy) <==> [what works and what doesn't] <==> (actual strategy)

intended strategy
emergent strategy
strategic actions
actual strategy

42:13
strategy that you intended when you first started the business
when a new business is first emerging, rarely is it possible to know the right strategy (business model, value network) at the beginning

coming from the bottom
you get into the market, and you try things, some times you fail, some times you succeed, but once you figure out a system that works, then strategy needs to come from the top,

42:36
42:40
43:19
Intel, they discovered the microprocessor by a complete accident
and through trial & error developed a business model that enable them to make a good products that they could sell for attractive profits
and once the business model become clear then Andy Grove's genius was to say, all right the time for experimentation is over, everyone focus on building the microprocessor business and because they allowed the right strategy to emerge in the initial phase and drove it from the top at a later stage and standardized it across the world, they became very very successful, then a tough thing happens because when the original growth game ends and for intel the original growth game is coming to an end, companies find it very difficult now to flip back around and let the next solution to the next generation products bubble up again from the troops, because the troops have developed such a reverence for the wisdom of the CEO (top people), they think that's where the strategic direction should come from, and in a context where things are very unresolved, usually the CEOs find it impossible to know what the right direction is and you've got gotta to let new solutions to the new problems bubble up from below;

bubble up
bubble in

22 July 2003

source:
        youtube.com
        Dealing with the dangers of success | Clayton Christensen | 2003
        BYU speeches
        published on Jan 25, 2021
        38:35
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

   << this is here because after reading Clayton Christensen talking about Intel's problem of having to - over a period of time - come up with a working Integrated Electronic business with microprocessor as the attractive profit driver, after they walk out of the memory business, it might make sense to watch this; however I changed my mind, and you can watch this later >>

source:
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze-pXbrWLkc
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze-pXbrWLkc
         youtube.com
         Simon Sinek in conversation with Big Change - Education as an Infinite Game
         27:04
         Big Change
         Jun 10, 2019
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[Day 4]

there is no data about the future, there is only data about the past
([ most of the time, there is no data about the past ])
([ much of the data about the past is not there, or if it is there, you've gotta to do heavy lift to get it into a format that is use able, user friendly: to get it (from persons, places, and things), gather it, store it, decode it, reformat it, massage it, and ... ])

the problem with that arrangement is that, you got to look into the future about which there is no data.
and either you had to do it in a crap shoot, or, you need to have theories of causality, because those of you who have history in science, realize that when we call some thing a theory, what it is, it's a statement with causality, causes what and why,
11:04

28:08
doing ‘’what the right thing is‘’ actually doesn't make sense if you look over the longer term

34:31
priority get embedded in the company's profits formula

56:02
so we convince them that, that's the wrong way to think about the world,
you need to understand what is the job they are trying to get done that cause them to come here to hire a milkshake, so a colleague and I
I hire a banana to do the job
I hire a donut to do a lot
I hire a bagel to do a lot

56:42
I need something to do with my other hand while I am drive
I am not hungry, but I know I would be hungry by 10 o'çlock
I just need something to thunk in my stomach
viscosity
it is so viscous (viscosity) it takes me 25 minute to suck up this thin straw
I don't care, It keeps me full all morning

1:00:56
have you ever wonder what job your wife hired you to do

1:02:11
you need to sit in Christine's chair
what are the jobs arising in Christine life where a husband might be useful
I am certain ... what you want... what to give you... as oppose to understand what's the job
could you use that, unless it's not an important question

1:05:50
we think that growth is the consequence of good technology and smart people, but in reality, growth is an input to be being able to sustain success, because of the marginal cost thinking;

1:07:20
marketing is done much more productively if they are part of the development of the product inputing into what is the job is, and if you do that well, you don't need marketing

1:08:07
things you want to do to the drive network effects versus things that are good for the individuals, may not be something that is good for the individuals, but if the individual does it, it's good for the whole; that conflict;

because if you do some thing for the network effects, in all likelyhood it will never have that impact, if it doesn't do the job of the person who is the customer who has to buy it; once you understand that, you can add characteristic to the product or service to have secondary effect, provided it doesn't compromise in anyway the job to be done

1:11:36
you need to setup a completely independent business, because you need a different business model; ...
you will never get an email saying, guys, we got disrupted; it's a process, not an event; if you wait until this is in trouble, then the game is over; so you have to do it in parallel; ...

source:
        youtube.com
        Clayton Christensen | how will you measure your life? | LinkedIn speaker
        8 years ago
        LinkedIn
        1:12:46
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[Day 5]
﴾ Day ٥﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

25 Jun 2016

    Rosamond Hutt
    Senior Writer, Formative Content

Yet the man who invented the theory of disruptive innovation, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, says the term is “widely misunderstood” and commonly applied to businesses that are not “genuinely disruptive”.

Take Uber: a company that is often referred to as a beacon of disruptive innovation because of its seismic impact on the taxi-cab industry. However, according to Christensen, who coined the term in his 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, the ride-hailing app isn’t an example of true disruptive innovation.

~~So what is disruptive innovation~~?

In a December 2015 article for the Harvard Business Review, Christensen and co-authors Michael Raynor and Rory McDonald set out to clear up confusion over what disruptive innovation is – and what it isn’t.

The Explainer: disruptive innovation

    https://youtu.be/mbPiAzzGap0
    https://youtu.be/mbPiAzzGap0

HBR

The theory goes that a smaller company with fewer resources can unseat an established, successful business by targeting segments of the market that have been neglected by the incumbent, typically because it is focusing on more profitable areas.

As the larger business concentrates on improving products and services for its most demanding customers, the small company is gaining a foothold at the bottom end of the market, or tapping a new market the incumbent had failed to notice.

This type of start-up usually enters the market with new or innovative technologies that it uses to deliver products or services better suited to the incumbent’s overlooked customers – at a lower price. Then it moves steadily upmarket until it is delivering the performance that the established business’s mainstream customers expect, while keeping intact the advantages that drove its early success.

~~Disruption happens when the incumbent’s mainstream customers start taking up the start-up’s products or services in volume. Think Blockbuster and Netflix~~.

[Image: The disruptive innovation model ]

These upheavals occur, according to Christensen, not because established companies do not innovate (they do), but because they’re focusing on making good products better for their existing customers. (This is called "sustaining innovation" and it is different from disruptive innovation.)

~~“These improvements can be incremental advances or major breakthroughs, but they all enable firms to sell more products to their most profitable customers,” Christensen, Raynor and McDonald write~~.

Meanwhile, disruptive companies are exploiting technologies to deliver new or existing products in radically different ways. (Netflix moved away from its old business model of posting rental DVDs to customers to streaming on-demand video.) Their offerings are initially inferior to the incumbents’, and, despite the lower price, customers are usually not prepared to switch until the quality improves. When this happens, lots of people start using the product or service, and market prices are driven down.

~~What about Uber?~~

Uber has not moved up from the low end of the market: it targets customers who already use cabs. Nor is it primarily going after people who take public transport or drive themselves. And the service, while competitively priced or slightly cheaper than traditional taxis, is not generally regarded as inferior.

“Disrupters start by appealing to low-end or unserved consumers and then migrate to the mainstream market. Uber has gone in exactly the opposite direction: building a position in the mainstream market first and subsequently appealing to historically overlooked segments,” write the authors.

Tesla Motors, Elon Musk’s electric car company, is another Silicon Valley firm they say has been wrongly labelled as “disruptive”. In fact, Tesla started at the top end of the market and now, with the Model 3, is offering an affordable electric car to mainstream customers.

~~How can companies survive disruption?~~

Google is developing self-driving cars, Amazon is experimenting with drones to deliver shopping, and there’s a chance that in future we could 3D print medication in our own homes. With these potentially disruptive innovations on the horizon, how should existing companies respond?

While the mantra “disrupt or be disrupted” may strike fear into the heart of many a large firm, true disruptive innovation is surprisingly rare.

~~Companies need to react to disruption, but they should not overreact, say Christensen, Raynor and McDonald, for example, by dismantling a still-profitable business~~.

The answer is instead to bolster relationships with key customers by investing in "sustaining innovations".

In addition, companies can create a new division tasked with going after the growth opportunities resulting from disruption.

“Our research suggests that the success of this new enterprise depends in large part on keeping it separate from the core business. That means that for some time, incumbents will find themselves managing two very different operations,” they write.

“Of course, as the disruptive stand-alone business grows, it may eventually steal customers from the core. But corporate leaders should not try to solve this problem before it is a problem.”

source:
        https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/what-is-disruptive-innovation
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[Day 5]

    15 Nov 2016

Disruptive Innovation Theory: What It Is & 4 Key Concepts

Chris Larson, Staff

    Disruptive Strategy

Disruptive innovation has been a buzzword since Clayton Christensen coined it back in the mid 1990s to describe the way in which new entrants in a market can disrupt established businesses. It’s gained even more prominence in the past two decades as companies like Uber, Lyft, Etsy, and countless other startups have emerged with a goal of changing their respective industries.

For a term thrown around so frequently, it’s surprising how often it’s misunderstood. What does “disruptive innovation” actually mean, and how can today’s businesses—both the disruptors and the disrupted—form an understanding that will allow them to spot potential opportunities and threats?

This post explores disruptive innovation and offers four key concepts that can help you apply the theory to your business.
What Is Disruptive Innovation?

According to Christensen, disruptive innovation is the process in which a smaller company, usually with fewer resources, is able to challenge an established business (often called an “incumbent”) by entering at the bottom of the market and continuing to move up-market. This process usually happens over a number of steps:

    ﴾1.﴿   Incumbent businesses innovate and develop their products or services in order to appeal to their most demanding and/or profitable customers, ignoring the needs of those downmarket.
    ﴾2.﴿    Entrants target this ignored market segment and gain traction by meeting their needs at a reduced cost compared to what is offered by the incumbent.
    ﴾3.﴿    Incumbents don’t respond to the new entrant, continuing to focus on their more profitable segments.
    ﴾4.﴿    Entrants eventually move upmarket by offering solutions that appeal to the incumbent’s “mainstream” customers.
    ﴾5.﴿    Once the new entrant has begun to attract the incumbent business’s mainstream customers en masse, disruption has occurred.

﴾1.﴿
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4 Tips for Understanding the Theory of Disruptive Innovation

1. Not All Innovation Is Disruption

According to Merriam Webster, disruption is "to cause (something) to be unable to continue in the normal way: to interrupt the normal progress or activity of (something)." If this definition is applied to business, then really anything that enters a market and is successful can be seen as "disruptive." At least that’s how the term is often used today.

But this isn’t how Christensen defined it when writing in the 1990s.

An article by Ilan Mochari discusses the misuse of the word disruption when referring to business. As he clarifies, disruption is "what happens when the incumbents are so focused on pleasing their most profitable customers that they neglect or misjudge the needs of their other segments."

2. Disruption Can Be Low-End or New-Market

Disruption can come in different varieties: Low-end disruption and new-market disruption.

• Low-end disruption refers to businesses that come in at the bottom of the market and serve customers in a way that is "good enough." These are generally the lower profit markets for the incumbent and thus, when these new businesses enter, the incumbents move further "upstream." In other words, they put their focus on where the greater profit margins are.

• New-market disruption refers to businesses that compete against non-consumption in lower margin sectors of an industry. Similar to low-end disruption, the products offered are generally seen as "good enough," and the emerging business is profitable at these lower prices.

The main difference between the two types lies in the fact that low-end disruption focuses on overserved customers, and new-market disruption focuses on underserved customers.

3. Disruptive Innovation Is a Process, Rather Than a Product or Service

When innovative new products or services, such as Apple’s iPhone or Tesla’s electric car, launch and grab the attention of the press and consumers, do they qualify as disruptors in their industries?

In the Harvard Business Review, Christensen cautions that it takes time to determine whether an innovator’s business model will succeed. He cites Netflix as an example that didn’t threaten Blockbuster at first; its DVDs-by-mail service didn’t satisfy customers who wanted to get their hands on the latest new release instantaneously. But in shifting to an on-demand streaming model, Netflix siphoned away Blockbuster’s core users before the company could stage an adequate response.

Will the next new launch be a flash in the pan, or a formidable competitor? Keeping a close eye on the process, and being able to determine whether that product or service is evolving its business model to better serve customers’ needs, will help you evaluate the extent of the threat.

4. Choose Your Battles Wisely

If you’re currently an incumbent, you want to be on the lookout for potentially disruptive emerging businesses. It’s important to note, however, that not all new entrants will prove to be disruptive.

Every fire doesn’t need to be extinguished, nor will it threaten your house. If you treat every fire as dangerous because someone else calls it “disruptive,” you’ll soon discover it’s not possible to put every fire out and, in the interim, will waste your resources. The fires you have to worry about are the ones that truly threaten you. Understanding the correct meaning and application of the word “disruption” will help you identify and target true threats.

On the other hand, new entrants can also benefit from achieving a better understanding of disruption, as it will help you identify opportunities to start or scale your business. An understanding of disruption, coupled with Christensen’s other theory of "Jobs to be Done," can help you create products and services that will be desired by customers and, ideally, left alone by incumbents.
Understanding the Impact of Disruptive Innovation

Whether you're an incumbent intent on defending your market share and profits or you are a new entrant seeking to grab a piece of the pie, understanding disruptive innovation as a process can offer valuable insights you can incorporate into your business plan.

This post was updated on August 30, 2019. It was originally published on November 15, 2016.

About the Author
Chris Larson is a former intern at Harvard Business School Online who worked with the marketing and product management teams.

source:
        https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/4-keys-to-understanding-clayton-christensens-theory-of-disruptive-innovation
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[skip]

Clayton M. Christensen, Innovator's dilemma, 1997, 2000                     [ ]

p.xv
An alternative explaination, however, is that these failed firms were as well-run as one could expect a firm managed by mortals to be — but that there is something about the way decisions get make in successful organizations that sows the seeds of eventual failure.
    The research reported in this book supports this latter view: It shows that in the cases of well-managed firms such as those cited above, GOOD management was the most powerful reason they failed stay atop their industries. Precisely BECAUSE these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in new technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership.
    What this implies at a deeper level is that many of what are now widely accepted principles of good management are, in fact, only situationally appropriate. There are times at which it is right NOT to listen to customers, right to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise LOWER margins, and right to aggressively pursue small, rather than substantial, markets. ...

pp.xviii—xix
    ... Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use. There are many examples in addition to the personal desktop computer and discount retailing examples cited above. Small off-road motorcycles introduced in North America and Europe by Honda, Kawasaki, and Yamaha were disruptive technologies relative to the powerful, over-the-road cycles made by Harley-Davidson and BMW. Transistors were disruptive technologies relative to vacuum tubes. Health maintenance organization were disruptive technologies to conventional health insurers. In the near future, "internet appliances" may become disruptive technologies to suppliers of personal computer hardware and software.

pp.xix—xx
The second element of the failure framework, the observation that technologies can progress faster than market demand, illustrated in Figure 1.1, means that in their effort to provide better products than their competitors and earn higher prices and margins, suppliers often "overshoot" their market: They give customers more than they need or ultimately are willing to pay for. And more importantly, it means that disruptive technologies that may underperform today, relative to what users in the market demand, may be fully performance-competitive in the same market tomorrow.
    For example, mainframe performance has surpassed the requirements of many original customers, who today find that much of what they need to do can be done on desktop machines linked to file servers. ... Similarly, many shoppers who in 1965 felt they had to shop at department stores to be assured of quality and selection now satisfy those needs quite well at Target and Wal-Mart.

p.xx
The last element of the failure framework, the conclusion by established companies that investing aggressively in disruptive technologies is not a rational financial decision for them to make, has three bases. First, disruptive products are simpler and cheaper; they generally promise lower margins, not greater profits. Second, disruptive technologies typically are first commercialized in emerging or insignificant markets. And third, leading firms' most profitable customers generally don't want, and indeed initially can't use, products based on disruptive technologies. By and large, a disruptive technology is initially embraced by the least profitable customers in a market. Hence, most companies with a practiced discipline of listening to their best customers and identifying new products that promise greater profitability and growth are rarely able to build a case for investing in disruptive technologies until it is too late.

[Day 6]

p.xxii
Colleagues who have read my academic papers reporting the findings recounted in chapters 1 through 4 were struck by their near-fatalism. If good management practice drives the failure of successful firms faced with disruptive technological change, then the usual answers to companies' problem — planning better, working harder, becoming more customer-driven, and taking a longer-term perspective — all EXACERBATE the problem. Sound execution, speed-to-market, total quality management, and process engineering are similarly ineffective. Needless to say, this is disquieting news to people who teach future managers!

(Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, copyright © 1997, 2000, 658.4 Christen, )
____________________________________

[Day 6]

pp.xxiii—xxvii, p.113
— There are five reasons why it's hard to respond to a disruptive attack, but if you understand them, you can use them to your advantage.

1. Companies depend on customers and investors for resources.
   Resource dependence: Customers effectively control resource allocation in well-run companies.

2. Small markets don't solve the growth needs of large companies.
   Small markets don't provide sufficient growth for big companies.

3. Markets that don't exist, can't be analyzed.
   The ultimate uses or Applications for disruptive technology is unknowable in advance, and you need to fail your way to success.

4. An organization's capabilities define its disabilities
   Organizations have capabilities, processes and values independent of the people within them. These strengths within their current business model are disabilities when dealing with a new market.
   Organizations' capabilities reside in their processes and their values — and the very processes and values that constitute their core capabilities within the current business model also define their disabilities when confronted with disruption.

5. Technology supply may not equal market demand.
   The attributes that make disruptive technologies unattrative in the established markets often are the very ones that constitute their greatest value in emerging markets.

    (Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, copyright © 1997, 2000, 658.4 Christen, pp.xxiii—xxvii, p.113)
   ____________________________________

[Day 6]

p.xxvi
... the right strategy for exploiting them, cannot be known in advance. Called discovery-based planning, it suggests that managers assume that forecasts are wrong, rather than right, and that the strategy they have chosen to pursue may likewise be wrong. Investing and managing under such assumptions drives managers to develop plans for learning what needs to be known, a much more effective way to confront disruptive technologies successfully.

[Day 7]

p.xxviii, p.217, p.218
p.xxviii
    ... When the performance of two or more competing products has improved beyond what the market demands, customers can no longer base their choice upon which is the higher performing product. The basis of product choice often evolves from functionality to reliability, then to convenience, and, ultimately, to price.
    ... [...] ...
    In their efforts to stay ahead by developing competitively superior products, many companies don't realize the speed at which they are moving up-market, over-satisfying the needs of their original customers as they race the competition toward higher-performance, higher-margin markets. In doing so, they create a vacuum at lower price points into which competitors employing disruptive technologies can enter. Only those companies that carefully measure trends in how their mainstream customers USE their products can catch the points at which the basis of competition will change in the market they serve.

p.217
    A product becomes a commodity within a specific market segment when the repeated changes in the basis of competition, as described above, complexly play themselves out, that is, when market needs on each attribute or dimension of performance have been fully satisfied by more than one available product. The performance oversupply framework may help consultants, managers, and researchers to understand the frustrated comments they regularly hear from salespeople beaten down in price negotiations with customers: "Those stupid guys are just treating our product like it was a commodity. Can't they see how much better our product is than the competition's?" It may, in fact, be the case that the product offerings of competitors in a market continue to be differentiated from each other. But differentiation loses its meaning when the features and functionality have exceed what the market demands.

p.218
    Consider, for example, the product evolution model, called the 'buying hierarchy' by its creators, Windermere Associates of San Francisco, California, which describes as typical the following four phases: functionality, reliability, convenience, and price. Initially, when no available product satisfies the functionality requirements of the market, the basis of competition, or the criteria by which product choice is made, tends to be product 'functionality.' (Sometimes, as in disk drives, a market may cycle through several different functionality dimensions.) Once two or more products credibly satisfy the market's demand for functionality, however, customers can no longer base their choice of products on functionality, but tend to choose a product and vendor based on 'reliability.' As long as market demand for reliability exceeds what vendors are able to provide, customers choose products on this basis — and the most reliable vendors of the most reliable products earn a premium for it.
    But when two or more vendors improve to the point that they more than satisfy the reliability demands by the market, the basis of competition shifts to 'convenience.' Customers will prefer those products that are the most convenient to use and those vendors that are most convenient to deal with. Again, as long as the market demand for convenience exceeds what vendors are able to provide, customers choose products on this basis and reward vendors with premium prices for the convenience they offer. Finally, when multiple vendors offer a package of convenient products and services that fully satisfies market demand, the basis of competition shifts to 'price.' The factor driving the transition from one phase of buying hierarchy to the next is performance oversupply. ([ not surprisingly, this same market model bears itself out in the labour supply market. This explains why we have unemployment and under-employment. Where else does this market model bears itself out? However when it comes to lawyers and other professionals, many have a per-hour-rate price floor and the professionals will decline to accept a new client to start the case unless the clients can pay upfront. Businesses and customers like performance oversupply with a permeable price floor and a rigid price ceiling. All that is a fancy way of saying, there is not enough jobs. Saying, "there is not enough jobs" does not address the issue of finding a way for all members of the civil society to making a livelihood, to be able to raise a family, and to grow old and pass away gracefully in a caring, nurturing and soulful surrounding. ])

    (Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, copyright © 1997, 2000, 658.4 Christen, p.xxviii, p.217, p.218)
   ____________________________________

[Day 8]

p.3
When I began my search for an answer to the puzzle of why the best firms can fail, a friend offered some sage advice. "Those who study genetics avoid studying humans," he noted. "Because new generations come along only every thirty years or so, it takes a long time to understand the cause and effect of any changes. Instead, they study fruit flies, because they are conceived, born, mature, and die all within a single day. If you want to understand why something happens in business, study the disk drive industry. Those companies are the closest things to fruit flies that the business world will ever see."

    (Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, copyright © 1997, 2000, 658.4 Christen, p.3)
   ____________________________________

[Day 8]

• With Drosophila [fruit flies], one need not wait for entire growing season to learn the results of genetic crosses; one can get a new generation every ten days.

Evelyn Fox Keller, A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock, 1983

p.59
According to Creighton, Morgan later confessed that he had known about Stern's work a the time. But, as he explained (about a year after his intervention), he was also aware of the fact that, even though Creighton and McClintock had begun the summer before, it would have been a simple matter for Stern to overtake them. With Drosophila [fruit flies], one need not wait for entire growing season to learn the results of genetic crosses; one can get a new generation every ten days. Creighton recalls Morgan's saying, “I thought it was about time that corn got a chance to beat Drosophila!”

p.60
By way of summary, he concluded with a list of the five most important problems for geneticists in the immediate future. First was an understanding of “the physical and physiological processes involved in the growth of genes and their duplication”; second, “an interpretation in physical terms of the changes that take place during and after the conjugation of the chromosomes”; third, “the relation of genes to characters”; fourth, “the nature of the mutation process”; fifth, “the application of genetics to horticulture and to animal husbandry.”9

(A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock./ Evelyn Fox Keller., 1. McClintock, Barbara, 1902- ., 2. geneticists──united states──biography., QH439.2.M38K44 1983, 575.1'092'4, 10th anniversary edition, 1983, )
____________________________________

[skip]

Evelyn Fox Keller, A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock, 1983

p.50
Marcus Rhoades
Recalling his first days at Cornell, he confirms McClintock's account of his role in mediating between her and the geneticists. “One thing that's to my credit ── that I recognized from the start that she was good, that she was much better than I was, and I didn't resent it at all. I gave her full credit for it. Because ── hell ── it was so damn obvious: she was something special.”2
According to Rhoades, she was the real inspiration of their little group. “I love Barbara ── she was tremendous.”
Over fifty years later, he sees no reason to revise his early judgement. “I've known a lot of famous scientists. But the only one I thought really was a genius was McClintock.”

p.50
but many found her somewhat difficult as well.
Rhoades explains: “Barbara couldn't tolerate fools ── she was so smart.” And evidently, at least at times, she was impatient with those who could not keep up with her. Nor did everyone understand the significance of her work. Both factors, in Rhoades's view, contributed to her initial difficulty in communicating with geneticists.

p.59
According to Creighton, Morgan later confessed that he had known about Stern's work a the time. But, as he explained (about a year after his intervention), he was also aware of the fact that, even though Creighton and McClintock had begun the summer before, it would have been a simple matter for Stern to overtake them. With Drosophila [fruit flies], one need not wait for entire growing season to learn the results of genetic crosses; one can get a new generation every ten days. Creighton recalls Morgan's saying, “I thought it was about time that corn got a chance to beat Drosophila!”

(A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock./ Evelyn Fox Keller., 1. McClintock, Barbara, 1902- ., 2. geneticists──united states──biography., QH439.2.M38K44 1983, 575.1'092'4, 10th anniversary edition, 1983, )
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[skip]

May 14, 2012 Issue

When Giants Fail
What business has learned from Clayton Christensen.

By Larissa MacFarquhar

   ....   ...   ....

“In the steel industry, as in your industry, there are tiers in the market,” he said. “At the bottom of the market is concrete reinforcing bar”—rebar. “Anyone can make rebar, but steel used to make appliances and cars”—sheet steel, at the top of the market—“is really tough to make. In the beginning, the mini mills were making steel from scrap, so the quality was crummy. The only market that would buy what the mini mills made was the rebar market, because there are almost no specs for rebar, and once you’ve buried it in cement you can’t verify if it made them anyway, so it was just the perfect market for a crummy product.

“As the mini mills attacked the rebar market, the reaction from the integrated mills was, man, they were happy to get out of rebar, because it was truly a dog-eat-dog commodity, and why would they ever want to defend the least profitable part of their business when, if they focussed their assets on angle iron and thicker bar and rod, the margins”—twelve per cent—“were so much better? So, as the mini mills expanded their capacity to make rebar, the integrated mills shut those lines down, and, as they chopped off the lowest-margin part of the product lines, their gross-margin profitability improved.”

The integrated mills and the mini mills were happy with each other until 1979. “That was the year that the mini mills succeeded in driving the last of the integrated mills out of rebar,” Christensen said. “Bam!—the price of rebar collapsed by twenty per cent. It turned out that there was a subtle fact that nobody had thought about, and that is that a low-cost strategy only works when you have a high-cost competitor. As soon as the integrated mills fled upmarket, it was just low-cost mini mill fighting against low-cost mini mill. So what were these poor suckers going to do? One of them looked upmarket and said, ‘Holy cow, if we could make better steel, we could make money again!’ So they attacked the next tier of the market. And the integrated mills? Man, were they happy to wash their hands of that business. Because it was truly such a dog-eat-dog commodity business, and why would you ever defend a twelve-per-cent-margin business when you could focus your assets upmarket on structural steel, where the eighteen-per-cent margins were so much more attractive? And so the very same thing happened again. And as the integrated mills lopped off the lowest part of their product line their profitability improved.

   ....   ...   ....

The first industry that Christensen studied was disk drives. He had started out in consulting, then co-founded an advanced-materials firm called C.P.S. Technologies, but then he decided to follow the academic track that led to his becoming a professor at Harvard Business School. Someone told him that disk drives were the fruit flies of technology: they were ideal subjects for studying evolution, because a generation in disk-drive technology was incredibly short. He saw that the companies that made fourteen-inch drives for mainframe computers had been driven out of business by companies that made eight-inch drives for mini computers, and then the companies that made the eight-inch drives were driven out of business by companies that made 5.25-inch drives for PCs. What was puzzling about this was that the eight-inch drives weren’t as good as the fourteen-inch drives—they had a lower capacity, and a higher cost per megabyte—and the 5.25-inch drives were inferior to the eight-inch drives. So why hadn’t the fourteen-inch-drive companies simply started producing eight-inch drives? It didn’t make sense.

   ....   ...   ....

Around the same time, Christensen happened to remember that in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, a neighbor had brought in a big, powerful steam shovel to build a bomb shelter in her back yard, and he thought, Gee, you don’t see those big excavators anymore—you only see hydraulic backhoes. I wonder if the same thing happened to the excavators as happened to fourteen-inch disk drives? Sure enough, he discovered that although the hydraulic backhoe was used only for tiny jobs when it was first introduced—it was so weak, and its reach so short, that the only thing it was better than was a man with a shovel—over the years it had got better and better until, at last, it put the big excavators out of business.

In industry after industry, Christensen discovered, the new technologies that had brought the big, established companies to their knees weren’t better or more advanced—they were actually worse. The new products were low-end, dumb, shoddy, and in almost every way inferior. The customers of the big, established companies had no interest in them—why should they? They already had something better. But the new products were usually cheaper and easier to use, and so people or companies who were not rich or sophisticated enough for the old ones started buying the new ones, and there were so many more of the regular people than there were of the rich, sophisticated people that the companies making the new products prospered.

Another example he remembered from his own life was the transistor radio that Sony marketed in the nineteen-fifties. It was a terrible radio, you could barely make out the music for the static, and it had no chance of competing against the nice big RCA or Zenith consoles that middle-class families had on tables in their living rooms. But the transistors succeeded wildly at the bottom of the market, with the rebar of humanity: teen-agers. For teen-agers at that time, the alternative was nothing, and the transistor was better than that. Then, gradually, the transistors got better, and, by the time they got good enough to interest grownups, RCA and Zenith were too far behind to catch up. The same thing was happening now with phone cameras: when they first appeared, they took terrible pictures, but they were so convenient that people used them anyway, and over time they got better. Christensen called these low-end products “disruptive technologies,” because, rather than sustaining technological progress toward better performance, they disrupted it.

   ....   ...   ....

Some people said that Christensen was a man with a hammer to whom everything looked like a nail. But he wasn’t the only one who saw nails everywhere. Not long after “The Innovator’s Dilemma” came out, Christensen got a call from William Cohen, at that time the Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, who asked him to talk to him and his staff about his research. Imagining a few second lieutenants and interns, Christensen was startled to see, upon entering Cohen’s office, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretaries of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, and their Under-, Deputy, and Assistant Secretaries, all waiting to hear him. Bewildered, Christensen told his story about the integrated steel mills and the mini mills, until the chairman of the Joint Chiefs interrupted him and said, “You don’t have any idea why you’re here, do you?” Christensen admitted that he didn’t, and the chairman explained that, for him and his staff, the Soviets were sheet steel, terrorism was rebar, and they needed to figure out how to reconfigure their organization to capture the low end of the market. (Later, the government decided to set up an independent spinoff terrorism branch, in Norfolk, Virginia.)

   ....   ...   ....

source:
        https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/05/14/when-giants-fail

<----------------------------------------------------------------------------><---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 9]

Sidney Dekker, The field guide to human error investigations, 2002

p.91 (pdf page: 90/154)
It is hard for organizations, especially in highly regulated industries, to admit that these kinds of tricky goal trade-offs arise; even arise frequently. But denying the existence of goal conflicts does not make them disappear. For a human error investigation it is critical to get these goals, and the conflicts they produce, out in the open. If not, organizations easily produce something that looks like a solution to a particular incident, but that in fact makes certain goal conflicts worse.

p.123 (pdf page: 121/154)
High reliability organizations do not try to constantly close the gap between procedures and practice by exhorting people to stick to the rules. Instead, they continually invest in their understanding of the reasons beneath the gap. This is where they try to learn──learn about ineffective guidance; learn about novel, adaptive strategies and where they do and do not work work.

p.134 (pdf page: 131/154)
In this sense your recommendations are a prediction, a hypothesis. You propose to modify something, and you implicitly predict it will have a certain effect on human behavior. The strength of your prediction, of course, hinges on the credibility of the connection you have shown earlier in your investigation: between the observed human errors and critical features of tasks, tools and environment. With this prediction in hand, you challenge those responsible for implementing your recommendations to go along in your experiment──to see if, over time, the proposed changes indeed have the desired effect on human performance.

p.134 (pdf page: 131/154)
• the ease with which your recommendation can be implemented;
• the effectiveness of your recommended change.

The ease of implementation and the effectiveness of an implemented recommendation generally work in opposite directions. In other words: the easier the recommendation can be sold and implemented, the less effective it will be (see Figure 11.1).

p.135 (pdf page: 132/154)
     But after implementation, the potential for the same kinds of error is left in the organization or operation. The error is almost guaranteed to repeat itself in some shape or form, through someone else who finds him or herself in a similar situation. Low-end recommendation really deal with symptoms, not with causes. After their implementation, the system as a whole has not become much wiser or better.

p.140 (pdf page: 137/154)
A really good investigation does not necessarily lead to the implementation of really good countermeasures. In fact, the opposite may be true if you look at figure 11.1. Really good investigations may reveal systemic shortcomings that necessitate fundamental interventions which are too expensive or sensitive to be accepted.

    source: The field guide to human error investigations, by Sidney Dekker,
             Cranfield university press
    filename: DekkersFieldGuide.pdf

   (Sidney Dekker, The field guide to human error investigations, 2002, )
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 10]
﴾ Day ١٠﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

Dorothy Sayers (mmm)

The Plan

Page 49,
     G. A. Blaauw points out that creative effort involves three
dis
tinct phases:
   (1) architecture,
   (2) implementation, and
   (3) realization.

Page 15,
     Dorothy Sayers divides creative activity into three stages:
     1. the idea (architecture),
     2. the implementation (implementation), and
     3. the interaction (realization).

     (The mythical man-month : essays on software engineering, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. -- Anniversary ed., © 1985, Software engineering, p.49, p.15.)
   ____________________________________

[Day 10]

p.15
Dorothy Sayers, in her excellent book, "The Mind of the Maker," divides creative activity into three stages: the idea, the implementation, and the interaction.

     The idea ﴾1﴿
      “A book, then or a computer, or a program comes into existence first as an ideal construct, built outside time and space, but complete in the mind of the author.”

     The implementation ﴾2﴿
       “It is realized in time and space, by pen, ink, and paper, or by wire, silicon, and ferrite.”

     The interaction ﴾3﴿
        “The creation is complete when someone reads the book, uses the computer, or runs the program, thereby interacting with the mind of the maker.”

This description, which Miss Sayers uses to illuminate not only human creative activity but also the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (tri=3) (adopted from Greek philosophy), will help us in our present task.

For the human makers of things, the incompletenesses and inconsistencies of our ideas become clear only during implementation. Thus it is that writing, experimentation, "working out" are essential disciplines for the theoretician.

In many creatives activities the medium of execution is intractable. Lumber splits; paints smear; electrical circuits ring. These physical limitations of the medium constrain the ideas that may be expressed, and they also create unexpected difficulties in the implementation.

Implementation, then, takes time and sweat both because of the physical media and because of the inadequacies of the underlying ideas. We tend to blame the physical media for most of our implementation difficulties; for the media are not "ours" in the way the ideas are, and our pride colors our judgement.

(The mythical man-month : essays on software engineering, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. -- Anniversary ed., © 1985, Software engineering, p.15 )
   ____________________________________

[Day 10]

architecture, implementation, and realization.

p.49     As Blaauw points out, the total creative effort involves three distinct phases:

     ﴾1﴿ architecture,
     ﴾2﴿ implementation, and
     ﴾3﴿ realization.

     It turns out that these can in fact be begun in parallel and proceed simultaneously.

(The mythical man-month : essays on software engineering, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. -- Anniversary ed., © 1985, Software engineering, p.15, p.49 )
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 11]

• You must understand your mistakes.
   Study the hell out of them. You're not going to have the chance of making the same mistake again ── you can't step into the river again at the same place and the same time ── but you will have the chance of making a similar mistake.

• It's not enough to make time for your children.
   There are certain stages in their lives when you have to give them the time when they want it.
   You can't run your family like a company. It doesn't work.

• The most powerful tool of all is the word no.

source:
         Andy Grove: what I've learned
         by Mike Sager
         Jan 29, 2007
         esquire.com

   (Andy Grove: what I've learned | by Mike Sager | Jan 29, 2007 | esquire.com )
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 12]

• what tends to happen is when there is a growing gap between, a dissonance between the actions of people who are close to the actions and the comprehension (understanding) and statements of senior management, like myself.

• strategic dissonance - when what you do daily is different from what the management is saying

• big telltale sign : growing and seemingly irreconcilable differences between what a company does and what a company says it's supposed to be doing.

• let experimentation take place and watch them like a hawk, and see which one get traction

• start doing experimentation when your business is strong

• then we put him on the new area and guess what, the new area is not going to succeed. Now is it not going to succeed because it was a bad idea in the first place? Or is it not going to succeed because we put our second class people on developing it? That's how it goes in real life.

• we under invest in experimentation. In a more demanding business environment, it would have been a bit too late.

• we are going to invest in microprocessor. best in development, best in factories, best in design developmental tools, this worked for us, and over time, our expertise had led to reinforcing, a positive feedback, if you wish. the better we become, the more we are able to attract the best people, the more we are able to get the attention of people, the more we are able to get the developmental tools designer to design better tools for us,

• trapped by our own success and legacy

• how do you know if it is a signal of change or just noise in the system?

source:
        youtube.com
        Andy Grove
        MIT
    (youtube.com | Andy Grove | MIT)
   ____________________________________

Jordan Peterson is talking about the first sign of betrayal in a relationship that you totally ignore, or, make excuses for it, even though it seems out of character for that person to do; essentially, he or she breaks the usual pattern; ...

When I completed watching that video I thought of two things.
1) code refactoring

2) Andy Grove's MIT talk about Intel sales guy coming back saying, they were not getting the same respect as before when they went on the sales call with one of their customer. The customer broke the pattern. The sales guy sense that some thing was different. His sales supervisor told him to ignore it. Looking back on it, Andy Grove said, that it was a sign (a signal, not noise).

Jordan Peterson ~ Never Ignore Small Signs Of Coming Betrayal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAs0JKj9YzA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAs0JKj9YzA
7:06
the bests
Jan 11, 2020
   ____________________________________

On code refactoring (or rebuilding) and technical debt

the team inspired by the Strangler pattern philosophy that corporations like Google and now the U.S. Air Force recognize as a best practice. The Strangler pattern can be a useful approach for the Defense Department because it edges out an old system while replacing it with a new system.

► https://www.michielrook.nl/2016/11/strangler-pattern-practice/

Strangulation

Martin Fowler describes the Strangler Application:

► http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/StranglerApplication.html

    One of the natural wonders of this area are the huge strangler vines. They seed in the upper branches of a fig tree and gradually work their way down the tree until they root in the soil. Over many years they grow into fantastic and beautiful shapes, meanwhile strangling and killing the tree that was their host.

In this project the strangler pattern was applied on a page-by-page basis. Newly implemented pages are handled by new code, old pages by the legacy application.

To get there, the following steps were followed:

1. First, add a proxy, which sits between the legacy application and the user. Initially, this proxy doesn’t do anything but pass all traffic, unmodified, to the application.
2. Then, add new service (with its own database(s) and other supporting infrastructure) and link it to the proxy. Implement the first new page in this service. Then allow the proxy to serve traffic to that page (see below).
3. Add more pages, more functionality and potentially more services. Open up the proxy to the new pages and services. Repeat until all required functionality is handled by the new stack.
4. The monolith no longer serves traffic and can be switched off.

source:
    ► https://www.michielrook.nl/2016/11/strangler-pattern-practice/
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[skip]

Chapter
Michael Beer: It’s Not the Seed, It’s the Soil

    July 2017

Abstract

Michael Beer of the Harvard Business School is mainly known for his work on organizational change, strategic human resource management, and for the development of approaches/methods for strategic renewal. After a first career as an organizational researcher at Corning Glass works, he has remained a scholar-practitioner, with a burning interest in doing research which is both useful for theory and practice. Beer is interested in how organizational systems learn and change and ultimately in understanding what over time creates organizational system effectiveness. A major problem, he and his colleagues argue, is that management usually does not address changes in a systemic way. The result is a much lower success rate of organizational change initiatives. The employees of the organization often know how it can be improved, but because “truth cannot speak to power”, management only rarely gets to know what the organization thinks. They are therefore restricted from making a systemic analysis and do not get to know how they can address change in a systemic manner. A substantial part of Beer’s research has been focused on how to make such situations better. Together with a set of colleagues from aspirational CEOs of major corporations Beer and colleagues formed both an international consultancy firm – TruePoint, as well as a network of research centers – the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership

([ it's the soil, not the seed ])
([ Laws should target dog owners and not dogs. ])
([ target the gun dealers and makers not the guns. ])
([ target the archers not the arrows. ])

source:
        https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318578774_Michael_Beer_It's_Not_the_Seed_It's_the_Soil
<----------------------------------------------------------------------------> <---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[skip]
source1:
         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Infinite_Game

         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Sinek
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
[Day 13]
<< having read everything so far >>

    watch and listen to this
    it is less than 30 min
    see what you can pick-up

source2:
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze-pXbrWLkc
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze-pXbrWLkc
         youtube.com
         Simon Sinek in conversation with Big Change - Education as an Infinite Game
         27:04
         Big Change
         Jun 10, 2019 <---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
[skip]

<< the same CONTENT with a bit of differences >>
<< using the Tet offensive as an opening       >>

source3:
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tye525dkfi8
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tye525dkfi8
         youtube.com
         25:48
         The Infinite Game
         New York times events
         published on May 31, 2018 <---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[skip]

<< the same general CONTENT, short, quick      >>
<< for those that have 10 min budget           >>

source4:
         Simon Sinek - be an infinite player
         youtube.com
         10:30
         inspiratory
         Sept 16, 2017           <---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
[skip]
<< the same general CONTENT, shorter, quicker >>
<< for those that have 4 min budget           >>
<< if you have 15 minutes, you can watch      >>
<< the 3:27 and 10:30                         >>

source5:
         simon sinek - finite vs infinite game
         youtube.com
         3:27
         general insights
         oct 23, 2019 <---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
[skip]

<< for those that have 2 min budget                >>

<< unless you watched the longer version           >>
<< you can not know, what would be missing         >>
<< fear of missing out (FOMO)                      >>

<< you can not know, what you have not experienced >>

<< if you have less than 5 minutes, you can watch >>
<< the 1:19 and 3:27                              >>

source6:
         how to lead in The Infinite Game | the 5 practices
         youtube.com
         1:19
         simon sinek
         oct 22, 2019
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 14]

Jordan Peterson On The Illuminati
([ Jean Piaget ])
https://youtu.be/XnIFlD5Zvs8?t=744
https://youtu.be/XnIFlD5Zvs8?t=744
Clash of Ideas
Published on Oct 14, 2017
         ... ... ...
12:24   again by reading Jean Piaget, because one
12:26   of the things that Piaget said about
12:27   kids was that they first learned to play
12:29   a game but they don't know what the
12:31   rules are, meaning that if you have a
12:33   bunch of kids together they can play a
12:35   game, but if you take one of the kids out
12:37   of the game, when they're young, say six
12:38   and you say, what the rule are, what are
12:40   the rules, they can only sort of give you
12:42   a representation, so you take
12:44   six-year-old one, and he'll tell you some
12:46   of the rules, and six-year-old two will
12:47   tell you different rules, and and you
12:49   know six-year-old three will tell you
12:51   different rules, but if you put them all
12:52   together they can play, so they have the
12:55   knowledge embodied either individually
12:58   or in the group, the knowledge is there
12:59   to be extracted, well then they get a
13:02   little older, they can extract the rules
13:03   and then they start to play by the rules
13:06   and then the Piaget last step was, well
13:09   they doesn't just the kids play by the
13:10   rules, it's that they learned that they
13:11   can make the rules, and he thought about
13:13   that is moral progression, first you can
13:15   play, then you can play by the rules, then
13:17   you learn, maybe, because he didn't think
13:19   everyone learned this
13:20   that you're actually the master of the
13:21   rules, that doesn't mean the rules are
13:23   arbitrary, but it means that you can be
13:26   the generator of the rules, assuming
13:29   that you know how to play the game and
13:30   he thought about that as a moral moral
13:32   progression, and then I thought well
13:33   that's exactly what happened to Moses
         ... ... ...
15:56   this is something else Nietzsche
15:58   observed so interestingly and he said,
16:00   you know, that a moral revelation was the
16:03   consequence of a tremendously long
16:06   process of initial construction and then
16:09   formulation thousands and thousands and
16:12   thousands and thousands of years of
16:14   custom of building custom, before you get
16:17   the revelation of the articulated law,
16:20   and that's a description of the pattern
16:22   that works, and let's say, well what's the
16:24   pattern that works, it's the game that
16:26   you can play with everybody else, day
16:28   after day, with no degeneration, and
16:31   that's another thing Piaget figured out,
16:33   that's so brilliant, and that's his idea
16:35   of the equilibrate estate it's it's an
         ... ... ...
16:44   become a universal rule that was
16:45   Kant [Immanuel Kant] mental moral Maxim and Piaget
16:48   put a twist on that he said, no no, that's
16:50   not exactly yet its, act in such a way
16:53   that it works for you, now, and next week,
16:56   and next month, and next year, and ten
16:58   years from now, and so that, well, it's
17:01   working for you, it's also working for
17:02   the people around you, and for the
17:04   broader society, and and that's the
17:07   equilibrate estate and you could think
         ... ... ...
<----------------------------------------------------------------------------> <---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 15]
﴾ Day ١٥﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

• the challenge is to make better sense out of the situation than the next gal

• what frameworks do they wheel up to understand the situation

____________________________________

[Day 15]

James C. Morgan, J. Jeffrey Morgan., Cracking the Japanese market, 1991

p.121
The Japanese have an old proverb that goes, “If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.” That is precisely true of doing business in Japan. It is a moving target: in order to succeed, you must be ever diligent in learning, adapting, and evolving, and never for a moment assume you have mastered the marketplace.

(Cracking the Japanese market: strategies for success in the new global economy / James C. Morgan, J. Jeffrey Morgan., 1. marketing ―― Japan., 2. industrial management ―― Japan., 3. corporate culture ―― Japan., 4. corporations, American ―― Japan., 5. competition ―― Japan., 6. competition ―― United States., 7. Japan ―― economic conditions ―― 1989- , 8. Japan ―― economic policy ―― 1989-, HF5415.12.J3M66 1991, 658.8'0952――dc20, 1991, )
____________________________________

[Day 15]

An Interview with W. Brian Arthur
by Joel Kurtzman
April 1, 1998

http://www.strategy-business.com/article/16402?gko=8af4f
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/16402?gko=8af4f

April 1, 1998 / Second Quarter 1998 / Issue 11
(originally published by Booz & Company)

   .... ... ....

S&B: Does this mean that high tech should be regulated more? Or that it should be treated differently?

W. BRIAN ARTHUR: To the degree that markets are winner takes most, and very many of them are, then the concern in high tech is not so much prices as it is innovation. Prices keep falling in this area. The main concern is to make sure that innovation stays alive. Does innovation ever die? You bet it does. We're still using fax machines that were wonders in the 60's but with quality still from the 60's.

    So the big thing is to keep innovation going. But you can stifle innovation if you start to worry that someone locks in workstations for five years. Let them lock it in. Why not? They deserve it.

    So how does all this relate to the conversation at the start? One of the realities is that as we're moving into a more high-tech economy, the economy works under increasing rather than diminishing returns a significant proportion of the time. If you start to deny that, you're going to blow it in terms of government regulation or in terms of management strategy.

    But there are two other things to note. The first is that when you start to think about these unstable markets, what you're actually dealing with is process. That is, you're not dealing with equilibrium. Your main concern is what happens. Again, think of presidential primaries. The interesting thing is not who wins; the interesting thing is watching these teeter-tottering dynamics at the very start produce a bandwagon. Once there is a bandwagon, it becomes uninteresting, at least from an analytical point of view.

    So this shift to a high-tech economy throws a lot of the spotlight onto dynamics. In that case, economics has to start worrying about how markets form, how instability works and so on. These are certainly new concerns. Now, you could say that economics has always dealt with dynamics. To some degree it has, but not in any essential way. So high tech forces you into positive feedbacks. Positive feedbacks force you into looking at dynamics.

    The second thing I want to draw attention to is what I call the cognitive side of the economy. Meaning that in standard economics, we assume that every agent in the economy faces "Problems" to which there are "Solutions." These problems are conveniently formulated mathematically and the solutions are "rational" -- if you have a problem, you logically solve it.

    That fits quite well in the bulk commodity manufacturing economy. You can assume that there are big "Problems" scheduling your fleet of oil tankers or balancing your production line. Over many years, by dint of much thinking or operations research or just experience, managers get it right. Or reasonably right. And that's fine.

    But, again, in this technically based part of the economy, that's no longer the case. Let me go back to the casino metaphor. The problem is that if you sit down at a table and there's a new game opening up, let's say digital banking, and you want to play, you might have to ante up $2 billion just to get your company in position before the game starts. You don't know who the players are, you don't know what the rules are going to be, because they will be settled as the game starts. It's not that you're sitting down to play poker and everybody understands the rules.

    Instead, you're sitting down to play a game and the rules are going to be dictated in part by the technology, by the relevant government regulations and by how people proceed as they go. You don't know what technologies are going to be developed. You don't know what the government regulations are going to be. You don't know who's going to ante up what. Still, you have to decide whether to play or not to play. So this is not amenable to game theory or to any logical analysis. In fact, these issues are ill defined.

    Let me switch to another metaphor. You are in the prow of a ship with Bill Gates, Scott McNealy and others. The ship is moving through a fog, the fog of technology. You can see outlines of a city not far away. That's how this game is shaping up. The outline is not very good through the fog. But it's not just trying to make sense of what you see. What you see keeps changing, with the sense that other people are making of it.

    That means that formally all of this is ill defined. You're trying to give sense to a Rorschach ink blot that keeps changing with the sense that other people are giving to it.

S&B: What is driving these new markets? In the past, in the commodity era, it was shelter, food and other basic human needs. Has that changed?

W. BRIAN ARTHUR: No. The driver of the markets is the possibility of getting banking from my desk, the possibility of downloading movies at night into my television, the possibility of being in a chat room on the Net. These are still basic human needs that are intermediated by technology. It's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory. It's just that now technology provides for some of these human needs. I can talk with my kids by cellular phone if I leave the house. So the drivers of the new economy are the same human needs as before.

   .... ... ....

S&B: Yet management strategy must change?

W. BRIAN ARTHUR: Yes. Because it's not just that things are uncertain in this game, but that there is simply no correct answer. So the challenge to management in this game is not so much to optimize or get things right or to lay their bets just right. Instead, the challenge is to make better sense out of the situation than the next guy.

    You and I schedule rival fleets of oil tankers. You can get it right, I can get it right. If I can get it more right than you, I can make more profit than you. No problem. That's old standards.

    But suppose you and I are rival factions and we're going into Bosnia. Who's going to do well there? The people who do well are the ones who go in with a deeper sense of understanding. There's no getting it right. The challenge is a cognitive one.

    It is the same challenge when it comes to strategy in high tech. We're all staring at the same game, trying to figure it out. But it's not like poker or roulette, where there's an official correct strategy. The game's ill defined. The people who do well, and here I would mention Bill Gates, are the people with better vision and cognition, who can sort of understand how things will shape up. But again, there's no correct answer.

    It won't serve you well, when markets shift, to confront problems with a simple cognition and say, "Oh, yeah, this is just like when I had to optimize production," and start speeding up the assembly line, laying off workers and getting costs down. That does not help. You might have to do that, but what helps is seeing how these markets are shaping up. So the real players in these markets, the people who are very good, are those who come in and can see that suddenly the game has changed.

    To repeat, then, the strategic challenge here is a cognitive one. This in turn means that if economics wants to understand the new economy, it not only has to understand increasing returns and the dynamics of instability. It also has to look at cognition itself, something we have never done before in economics.

   .... ... ....

S&B: Look at cognition from what perspective?

W. BRIAN ARTHUR: Every perspective. Economics has always taken a shortcut and said, assume there is a problem and assume that we can arrive at a solution. Now I would say, assume there's a situation, how do players cognitively deal with it? In other words, what frameworks do they wheel up to understand the situation, like a Bosnia? Do they wheel up an inferior framework and say this is just like Palestine in the 1940's, this is just like whatever? We tend to shoehorn situations into a previous cognitive framework and we do that prematurely, and when we do we nearly always lose.

    There's a saying in Northern Ireland, where I'm from, that if you're not confused, you don't know anything. This is true. Confusion means having no cognitive framework, and that is better than having a wrong cognitive framework, which is what happens if you prematurely close in on an understanding. There's no correct understanding, but there are very bad ones.

    So the challenge in Bosnia is making sense. It's spending a lot of time figuring out what on earth is going on. The challenge is not optimizing U.N. troop placements. That has to come after you make sense.

    The challenge is similar when it comes to strategy and management in technology. My friend John Seely Brown at Xerox PARC put it this way: "In the old economy, the challenge for management is to make product. Now the challenge for management is to make sense."

    To take the challenge back to economics, we're being forced into a different world. There will be plenty of commodity production that works the same as it has always worked. But as high tech takes over -- through the Net, cheap computing, low-cost telecommunications and highly complicated products like missiles, biotech and custom-made pharmaceuticals -- the economy will be driven more and more by increasing rather than diminishing returns. It has become a place where we have to look more to the dynamics than the statics, at how things teeter and shift. We also have to look at games that are not well defined and how human beings make sense of them.

    If you keep looking through the prism of diminishing returns, equilibrium markets and rational problem-solution economics, you won't be able to understand this new economy at all.

Reprint No. 98209

Authors
Joel Kurtzman,
Joel Kurtzman is editor-in-chief of Strategy+Business.

©2016 PwC. All rights reserved. PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details. Mentions of Strategy& refer to the global team of practical strategists that is integrated within the PwC network of firms. For more about Strategy&, see www.strategyand.pwc.com. No reproduction is permitted in whole or part without written permission of PwC. “strategy+business” is a trademark of PwC.

Contact Webmaster Powered by Raven Creative, Inc. Designed by Opto Design
AN INTERVIEW WITH W. BRIAN ARTHUR
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 16 - review the notes from Day 2 to Day 15 ]

https://web.archive.org/web/20110323202905/https://w2.eff.org/Infrastructure/Wireless_cellular_radio/false_scarcity_baran_cngn94.transcript

   Keynote Talk Transcript, 8th Annual Conference on Next Generation
   Networks Washington, DC, November 9, 1994

   Visions of the 21st Century Communications: Is the Shortage of Radio
   Spectrum for Broadband Networks of the Future a Self Made Problem?

   by: Paul Baran, baran@com21.com

   Copyright 1994.

    .... ... ....

   Baran: That is my key objective of this discussion this morning. The
   more people that are aware of the problem, the faster we're going to
   work our way towards a solution. I think it behooves all of us who are
   aware of the problem to pass the word around; to study it, to see
   whether it makes sense to you. And, if it does, then it increases our
   base of those that appreciate the nature of the game being played. I
   think when this understanding becomes more widespread, we increase our
   chances to see some movement over time.

    .... ... .... <---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

success, end of growth, theory of disruption - ec

[Day 17]
﴾ Day ١٧﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

extra credit (reading)

• inevitable occupational hazard
    · The point is that intimate familiarity with an existing technology creates a strong disposition to work within that technology, and to make further modifications leading to its improvement rather than its displacement. (p.129, Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the black box: technology and economics, 1982, )

sources & reference:

    • Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the black box: technology and economics, 1982
       · book (biblio)

    • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness, 2nd edition, paperback, 2004
       · book (biblio)

    • Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, 1997, 2000.
       · book (biblio)

    • Dorothy Leonard-Barton, Wellsprings of Knowledge : building and sustaining the sources of innovation, 1995
       · book (biblio)

    • George Stalk, Jr. (and) Thomas M. Hout., Competing against time, 2009
       · book (biblio)

    •
       ·
﴾ ~0123456789-﴿ )`0987654321( )`1234567890-( +_)(*&^%$#@!~``
﴾ 0123456789﴿ {} }{ [] ][ <> ., >< ? / \ !@#$%^&*()_-=+ ?/,.><:;" '' \|/

<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 18]
﴾ Day ١٨﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the black box: technology and economics, 1982

p.129
16 The role of highly specialized producers, and the question of what constitutes the optimum degree of specialization from the point of view of technological innovation, are highly important issues that are still not very well understood. Specialist producers tend to be very good at improving, refining, and modifying their product. They tend to be weak in devising the new innovation that may constitute the eventual successor to their product. They tend, in other words, to work within an established regime, but they do not usually make the innovations that establish a new regime. Thus, the buggy makers did not contribute significantly to the development of the automobile; the steam locomotive makers played no role in the introduction of the diesel, and indeed expressed total disinterest, until it was finally introduced by General Motors; and the makers of piston engines did not play a prominent role, in England, Germany, or the United States, in the development and introduction of the jet engine. The severely circumscribed technological horizons of specialized producers-to some extent an inevitable occupational hazard-may help to account for what one recent book on the aircraft industry describes as "an apparent proclivity on the part of once successful manufacturers to remain too long with the basic technology of their original success." Almarin Phillips, Technology and Market Structure: A Study of the Aircraft Industry (Heath Lexington Books, Lexington, Mass., 1971), p. 91. The point is that intimate familiarity with an existing technology creates a strong disposition to work within that technology, and to make further modifications leading to its improvement rather than its displacement.

(Inside the black box./ Nathan Rosenberg, 1. technological innovations., 2. technology─social aspects., HC79.T4R673   1982, 338'.06, first published 1982, )
   ____________________________________

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness, 2nd edition, paperback, 2004   [ ]

[p.240]
     There are reasons to believe that, for evolutionary purposes, we may be programmed to build a loyalty to ideas in which we have invested time. Think about the consequences of being a good trader outside of the market activity, and deciding every morning at 8 a.m. whether to keep the spouse or part with him or her for a better emotional investment elsewhere. Or think of a politician who is so rational that, during a campaign, he changes his mind on a given matter because of fresh evidence and abruptly switches political parties. That would make rational investors who evaluate trades in a proper way a genetic oddity--perhaps a rare mutation. Researchers found that purely rational behavior on the part of humans can come from a defect in the amygdala that blocks the emotions of attachment, meaning that the subject is, literally, a psychopath. ([ I would qualify the word, defect, with there are evolutionary and natural selection reasonings as to why we exhibit psychopathic-like behavior and our brain are structured with wiring to enter into a non-emotional dis-connected psychopathic or sociopathic state; for those of us who are not a true, or, hardcore-to-the-bone psychopath or sociopath, the blow-back is PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). ])

     (Taleb, Nassim (2004)., Fooled by Randomness, 2nd edition, paperback)
(Fooled by Randomness: the hidden role of chance in life and in the markets / Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 1. investments, 2. chance, 3. random variables, 123.3 Taleb, p.240)
   ____________________________________

A brief side trip into Stoics and Buddhists philosophy might be worth exploring here -

- “”Stoics and Buddhists can both agree that pain is real, but suffering comes from the mind. Buddhists believe that suffering comes from our attachment to desires, while Stoics believe that suffering comes from our judgment to external events. A Buddhist eliminates suffering by detaching himself from his desires.“”

source:
        http://thestoicsage.com/stoicism-and-buddhism/ <---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 19]
﴾ Day ١٩﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

pp.85—86 n11
    11. Makers of early hybrid ocean transports, which were steam powered but still outfitted with sails, used the same rationale for their design as did the Bucyrus Erie engineers: Steam power still was not reliable enough for the transoceanic market, so steam power plants had to be backed up by conventional technology. The advent of steam-powered ships and their substitution for wind-powered ships in the transoceanic business is itself a classic study of disruptive technology. When Robert Fulton sailed the first steamship up the Hudson River in 1819, it underperformed transoceanic sailing ships on nearly every dimension of performance: It cost more per mile to operate; it was slower; and it was prone to frequent breakdowns. Hence, it could not be used in the transoceanic value network and could only be applied in a different value network, inland waterways, in which product performance was measured very differently. In rivers and lakes, the ability to move against the wind or in the absence of a wind was the attribute most highly valued by ship captains, and along that dimension, steam outperformed sail. Some scholar (see, for example, Richard Foster, in Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage [New York: Summit Books, 1986]) have marveled at how myopic were the makers of sailing ships, who stayed with their aging technology until the bitter end, in the early 1900s, completely ignoring steam power. Indeed, not a single maker of sailing ships survived the industry's transition to steam power. The value network framework offers a perspective on this problem that these scholars seem to have ignored, however. It was not a problem of KNOWING about steam power or having access to technology. The problem was that the customers of the sailing ship manufacturers, who were transoceanic shippers, could not use steam-powered ships until the turn of the century. To cultivate a position in steamship building, the makers of sailing ships would have had to engineer a major strategic reorientation into the inland waterway market, because that was the only value network where steam-powered vessels were valued throughout most of the 1880s. Hence, it was these firms' reluctance or inability to change strategy, rather than their inability to change technology, that lay at the root of their failure in the face of steam-powered vessels.
      ([ after reading this, then look at Warren Buffet writing and investment strategy of avoiding certain businesses, like technology businesses, that he does not deeply understand; Mister Buffet investment portfolio now makes much more sense. Intuitively, whether he said it or not, Warren Buffet has an intrinsic understanding of the innovator's dilemma as demonstrated by Bershire Hathaway portfolio and other imitators. ])

    (Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, copyright © 1997, 2000, 658.4 Christen, pp.85-86 n11)
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 20]
﴾ Day ٢٠﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

Dorothy Leonard-Barton, Wellsprings of Knowledge : building and sustaining the sources of innovation, 1995

p.177
Meno . . . see what a tiresome dispute you are introducing. You argue that a man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire.
——Dialogues of Plato 2
p.287
    2. Plato 1892
p.313
    Plato. 1892. The Dialogues of Plato. Translated by B. Jowett. New York: Macmillan Company. Copyright renewed by Oxford University Press, 1920.

p.183
    In his book Mobilizing Invisible Assets, Hiroyuki Itami 14 notes that there are three different kinds of customers, each contributing differently to a firm: (1) customers who generate profit, (2) customers who will generate sales growth, and (3) customers who allow the accumulation of invisible assets. Itami suggests that every company would wish to have a balanced mix of customers, so that the revenue-generating ones may tide the company over financially while other less profitable markets generate important knowledge for the future.

p.205
Schwartz tells how Smith & Hawken, a mail-order garden tool business, sharpened its focus when the company decided, in the late 1970s, to consider possible futures. It constructed three scenarios: (1) "more of the same but better," (2) "worse" (decay and depression), and (3) "different but better" (fundamental change). The company determined that the first two scenarios both suggested direct mail as the best approach, since either people would be wealthy enough to buy but too busy to get to the store, or the market would disappear and capital-intensive retail operations would be highly risky. Scenario 3, fundamental change, implied a concern for the environment and distrust of throwaway tools. The 1980s turned out to be a mixture of the three scenarios, with both yuppie wealth and homelessness in the United States and a growth in concern for the environment. Although none of the scenarios exactly played out, the company was better positioned because its managers had thought through which steps to take under the various conditions.49

    (Leonard-Barton, Dorothy, copyright © 1995, HD30.2.L46 1995, 658.4'038——dc20)
(Wellsprings of Knowledge : building and sustaining the sources of innovation / Dorothy Leonard-Barton, 1. information technology——management, 2. information resources management, 3. management information systems, )
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 21]
﴾ Day ٢١﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

George Stalk, Jr. (and) Thomas M. Hout., Competing against time, 2009       [ ]

pp.4-5
   When a company capitalize on a strategy innovation, its competitors must change. In times of change, executives have two basic choices: Sit out the change until its utility becomes clear or seize the initiative and take action before other competitors do. Generally, companies that actively seek and promptly exploit the newest strategy innovation grow faster and more profitably than do more slowly reacting companies. The challenge to executives is to recognize and act upon the new sources of advantage in their industry before competitors do and to be willing to adapt again when the current source of advantage is exhausted. To do so requires an appreciation of the shifts that have occurred and are occuring.

   strategy innovations: a retrospective

Until recently, innovations in business strategy were episodic. A major discovery, usually technology based, would upset the balance of an industry, and corporate fortunes would shift. For example, in transportation the railroads drew hoards of customers from river boats and horse-drawn overland transportation companies in the 1880s only to lose customers in the mid-20th century to trucking firms. Similarly, coal companies replaced wood companies in the market and were themselves upstaged by oil companies.
   Historically, the risk of an episodic change has required that management always be prepared for the unexpected, though it seldom was. Today, episodic changes in business strategy are fewer and they are being supplanted by evolutionary change——a continuum of change, not only in physical technologies but in managerial technologies as well.

([ perspective ])
p.11, p.14
   p.11
   Innovative competitors came to view their collection of businesses not as profit centers but as members of a portfolio of businesses, each of whose elements have different cash generation potentials as well as different strategic objectives. Some businesses are mature with healthy competitive positions. Others are growing rapidly and need more cash than they can generate to strengthen and preserve their emerging competitive positions. Thus, a business that needs cash for strategic growth could be fed from another, slower-growing, cash-rich division. In other words, instead of regarding the corporation as a collection of individual businesses where reinvestment is driven by the profit performance of each unit, the collection of businesses is managed as a portfolio of businesses——a portfolio that should contain some stable properties, some high growth/high risk properties, and some properties that are to be disposed of when the opportunities arises.
([ perspective ])
   p.14
   The trick ([tactic, arrangement]) was to have a portfolio rich with cash generators and with high opportunity cash users while maintaining a positive cash balance (Exhibit 1-6). Surprisingly, this is not much of a trick in the long run. Most companies develop balanced porfolios over time by default as severely disadvantaged businesses are closed or sold off under the continual pressure for profits and cash. The real challenge is to consciously manage the movement of businesses within the portfolio. Management must allocate the corporation's resources to move question-marked businesses into the star position before the growth slows, to keep the stars advantaged so that when growth slows the stars become cash cows, and to manage the cash cow for cash. The dogs need to be worked out of the portfolio. ([ this last statement deserveS greater reading & study ])

   (Stalk, George, HD69.T54S73 1990, 658.5'6——dc20, copyright © 2009)
( Competing against time : how time-based competition is reshaping gloabl markets / George Stalk, Jr. (and) Thomas M. Hout., 1. time management., 2. delivery of goods., 3. competition, international., 4. comparative advantage (international trade)., )
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

[Day 22]
﴾ Day ٢٢﴿
١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ٠

([
   there were three ways in which humans represented the world:
   (or, better, three ways of capturing experiences and action that we call “reality”)

     • One was by enaction;
        • action routines (dance, creature of habit, ritual, theatre, play, ...)
     • a second through imagery;
        • in pictures (scribble, sketching, drawing, story board, comic books, movies, films)
     • and a third through constructing symbolic systems.
        • in symbols (written language, sign, ...)
     • story telling, oral tradition, camp fire, radio, podcast, ???

◇ The shift in perception_X redefines “knowledge.”

     (a.) Acting involves       changing our behavior,
     (b.) Reframing involves    changing our thinking, and
     (c.) Transforming involves changing our perceptions_A.

    ])

The necessary revolution : how individual and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world
Peter Senge,
Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, Sara Schley
2008
   (The necessary revolution : how individual and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world, Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, Sara Schley, 2008, 338.927 Senge)

p.174
Ways of explaining reality

    **increasing leverage and opportunity for learning
    ||
    ||   Events                 React
    ||   what just happened?
    ||
    ||   Patterns/Trends        Anticipate
    ||   what's been happening over time?
    ||   have we been here or some place
    ||   similar before?
    ||
    ||   Systemic Structures    Design
    ||   what are the deeper forces driving these
    ||   patterns or trends and how do they arise?
    ||   what are the forces at play contributing
    ||   to these pathways?
    ||
    ||   Mental Models          Transform
    ||   what about our thinking allows
    ||   this situation to persist?
    \/
    figure 12.1

   (The necessary revolution : how individual and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world, Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, Sara Schley, 2008, 338.927 Senge, p.174 )
   ____________________________________

Clay Christensen says everyone misunderstands his theory of disruption — here's what it really means

Richard Feloni
2015-11-17
22:48:00

[Image: clayton christensen]

Clayton Christensen speaks at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in 2014.

Joshua Lott/Getty

The terms "disruptive innovation" and "disruptive technology" are at risk of becoming meaningless buzzwords, according to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who introduced his theory of disruption 20 years ago.

As the number of "unicorn" companies, those valued at $1 billion or more, have captured the public's attention, the cult of disruption has spread beyond Silicon Valley. Disruption was mentioned more than 2,000 times in articles last year — but most people get it wrong, he writes in the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review.

"Unfortunately, disruption theory is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success," writes Christensen and his coauthors Deloitte director Michael Raynor and HBS assistant professor Rory McDonald. "Despite broad dissemination, the theory's core concepts have been widely misunderstood and its basic tenets frequently misapplied."

"Disruption" refers to the process that small companies can use to topple industry giants by grabbing a part of the market willing to sacrifice some quality usually for a cheaper price, and then moving upstream by adapting to a larger market.

Noting that "too many people who speak of 'disruption' have not read a serious book or article on the subject" and that the theory has been refined over the years, Christensen says there are four main points that are either overlooked or misunderstood that cause well-intending managers to make mistakes or critics to dismiss it entirely.

Here are the main points he would like to clarify:

1. Disruption is a process, not a moment in time.

Part of the problem, the authors write, is that people have come to think of companies disrupting an industry as soon as they enter with a new way of selling a product. But success through disruption doesn't come quickly.

[Image: blockbuster store closing]
Blockbuster died in 2014.
yapsnaps at http://www.flickr.com/photos/maladjusted/5207565912/
For example, one can consider Netflix 's disruption of the movie rental industry from its inception in 2002 to the demise of Blockbuster in 2012.

Netflix entered the industry by taking some of the market that was willing to wait a few days for a DVD to be mailed to their house in exchange for a much more affordable price than Blockbuster or other rental chains offered.

"The service appealed to only a few customer groups — movie buffs who didn't care about new releases, early adopters of DVD players, and online shoppers," the authors write.

Over time, it began to nab more customers from Blockbuster.

"[A]s new technologies allowed Netflix to shift to streaming video over the internet, the company did eventually become appealing to Blockbuster's core customers, offering a wider selection of content with an all-you-can-watch, on-demand, low-price, high-quality, highly convenient approach."

2. Disrupters typically utilize different business models, not just different products or services, from incumbents.

The authors point to the Apple iPhone as an example of using a business model to disrupt an industry.

Its initial success following its 2007 debut can be attributed to its product superiority in the smartphone market, but its lasting success was due to its disruption of the computer market, they say.

"The iPhone's subsequent growth is better explained by disruption — not of other smartphones but of the laptop as the primary access point to the internet," the authors write. "By building a facilitated network connecting application developers with phone users, Apple changed the game."

3. Disruptive innovation does not guarantee success.

Critics point out that plenty of companies that Christensen deemed disruptive have failed. Christensen and his coauthors counter that the theory was never intended to be equated with success, saying it was intended to explain an approach to competition.

This is also the reason why some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs incorrectly deem rapidly growing companies to be "disruptive" regardless of their business model, they say.

4. A company does not necessarily have to disrupt its core offering when it is being disrupted.

The mantra of "disrupt or be disrupted" can be dangerously misleading, the authors argue.

"Incumbent companies do need to respond to disruption if it's occurring, but they should not overreact by dismantling a still-profitable business," the authors write. "Instead, they should continue to strengthen relationships with core customers by investing in sustaining innovations. In addition, they can create a new division focused solely on the growth opportunities that arise from the disruption."

For example, Whole Foods has a small division devoted to online grocery delivery to compete with disrupters like Fresh Direct, but it won't be dismantling its brick-and-mortar stores anytime soon.

See Christensen and his coauthors' full essay on HBR's site.

source:
        https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https://www.businessinsider.com/clay-christensen-defends-his-theory-of-disruption-2015-11?op=1
   ____________________________________

Elon, Clay & Disruption

[Image: Jay Gerhart]
Jay Gerhart
Dec 26, 2018 · 12 min read

source:
        https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2Fthings-jay-writes%2Felon-clay-disruption-fa6f8de25cb1
   ____________________________________

Blogs
20-Year Predictions

George Colony, CEO
Dec 11 2017

At a client dinner last week in Amsterdam we turned from talking digital transformation and customer experience to a more future-oriented topic: What’s going to happen in the next 20 years? It was a great group, including some of the most visionary companies in the Benelux.

Here are a few of the 20-year predictions that were flying around the room…

1. Climate change impact, especially the cost, will outweigh all other issues in nations and society.

2. The Big Four accounting firms will become the Big Eight. The legacy four will be joined by four digital-native up-starts.

3. No commercial vehicle will move unless it is 100% filled. Why? The cost of energy and the cost of CO2 emissions will not allow it.

4. Human brains will link directly to devices and media via cognitive imaging.

5. Over-population will become a massive global issue, driving public policy and investments.

6. Wine will move north. Because of warming, Italian and French vines will die. In Europe, wine will move to Norway. In North America wine will move from California to Canada.

7. War in space — maybe on the moon.

8. The United States isn’t united. It will be divided into three countries: West America, Middle America, and East America.

9. No cows on the planet. All meat will be “printed” or grown at home.

10. Everyone’s DNA will be known. There will be nowhere to hide.

11. Therefore, human dignity will be under attack…

12. Therefore, a new age of ethics and rights will dawn, protecting people against digital and biological intrusion. The great-grandson of GDPR will be wildly popular with consumers and citizens.

13. Therefore, Google and Facebook will be history.

14. Families will be more important. Because of longer life-expectancy there will now be four generations living together. And the impersonal interactions of digital life and society will create more bonds at home. More global will equal more local

15. It will be illegal for a human to drive a vehicle on a major highway. Vehicles will be travelling at 180 mph, one foot from each other, informed via real-time peer-to-peer communications. A human would never be able to drive with the precision required by future nemobiles (self-driving cars).

([ there will be more poor and homeless people throughout the global world ])

([ the tension and resource allocation to address the growing immigation, migration, and global refugees should accelerate - increase variation and variety in system dynamics (stock-level, flow-rate) range; the constants, the variables, variation and variety are finite; if you list (enumerate) them all, the number should be less than 300 elements (or factors); if you can categorized them and clustered them together into interdepedent variables, then that should improve your understanding; after that, concentrate ...; find ways to monitor & track them, the data and the people; the data (sing. datum) exist within the social-economic context of the people and the culture [“Culture are the assumptions we cannot see” - Edgar Schein]; recall - physics or chemistry - dimensional analysis; prioritize and concentrate on the top 7 seven elements; ...])

Far-fetched? As Bill Gates once said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

source:
        https://go.forrester.com/blogs/20-year-predictions/
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Preston G. Smith, Donald G. Reinertsen, Developing products in half the time, 1998

p.77
    .... For example, the American railroad industry made the transition from steam to diesel technology during a 10-year period. At the beginning of this period the industry was 95 percent steam engines and at the end of it was 95 percent diesel. During these 10 years the steam engine manufacturers innovated extensively, yet they all went bankrupt. The problem was that there was no incremental path between steam and diesel technology. Similarly, there was no incremental path between vacuum tubes and transistors. If you bet on incremental innovation in such situations, you will be left behind by the new technology. There is an ultimate danger to the company that relies exclusively on incremental innovation, because eventually a technology shift will put it out of business.

   (Developing products in half the time / Preston G. Smith, Donald G. Reinertsen. --2nd ed., 1. new products., 2. product development., © 1998, p.77)
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Managing yourself
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Don’t reserve your best business thinking for your career.
by
Clayton M. Christensen (April 6, 1952 – January 23, 2020)

From the Magazine (July–August 2010) · Long read

Summary.

Harvard Business School’s Christensen teaches aspiring MBAs how to apply management and innovation theories to build stronger companies. But he also believes that these models can help people lead better lives. In this article, he explains how, exploring questions everyone needs to ask: How can I be happy in my career? How can I be sure that my relationship with my family is an enduring source of happiness? And how can I live my life with integrity?

The answer to the first question comes from Frederick Herzberg’s assertion that the most powerful motivator isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute, and be recognized. That’s why management, if practiced well, can be the noblest of occupations; no others offer as many ways to help people find those opportunities. It isn’t about buying, selling, and investing in companies, as many think.

The principles of resource allocation can help people attain happiness at home. If not managed masterfully, what emerges from a firm’s resource allocation process can be very different from the strategy management intended to follow. That’s true in life too: If you’re not guided by a clear sense of purpose, you’re likely to fritter away your time and energy on obtaining the most tangible, short-term signs of achievement, not what’s really important to you.

And just as a focus on marginal costs can cause bad corporate decisions, it can lead people astray. The marginal cost of doing something wrong “just this once” always seems alluringly low. You don’t see the end result to which that path leads. The key is to define what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

· .... ... .... ·

Before I published The Innovatorʼs Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.” I said that I couldn't — that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, Iʼve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.”

I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills.

When I finished the minimill story, Grove said, “OK, I get it. What it means for Intel is...,” and then went on to articulate what would become the companyʼs strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.

I've thought about that a million times since. If I had been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, Iʼd have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.

That experience had a profound influence on me. When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. Iʼll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, theyʼll say, “OK, I get it.” And theyʼll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.

My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general managerʼs job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions:

   First, how can I be sure that Iʼll be happy in my career?

   Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?

   Third, how can I be sure Iʼll stay out of jail?

Though the last question sounds lighthearted, itʼs not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.

    .... ... ....

source:
        https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life
        http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/pr
        https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-
will-you-measure-your-life
   ____________________________________

Charles I. Gragg sagely noted, "We cannot effectively use the insight of others; it must be our knowledge and insight that we use."

"We cannot effectively use the insight of others; it must be our knowledge and insight that we use."

http://www.hbs.edu/teaching/inside-hbs/

    Inside the Case Method

The development of judgment and leadership, based on sound analysis rooted in facts, is a core objective of the educational process at HBS.
    The case method is rooted in Harvard Business School's original vision. Edwin Gay, first Dean of HBS, called it the "problem method" and foresaw its value in creating leaders able to adjust as necessary to ever-changing business climates. From its inception a century ago, the School established two important pedagogical principles. First, it would use cases as teaching vehicles and not rely on lectures and readings. Second, it would engage the students in the learning process by getting them to teach themselves and each other. Today, although we also make use of lectures, simulations, fieldwork, and other forms of teaching as appropriate, more than 80 percent of HBS classes are built on the case method.
    Judgment, based on sound analysis rooted in facts, is what our students need to absorb from their education. But, as the late HBS professor Charles I. Gragg sagely noted, "We cannot effectively use the insight of others; it must be our knowledge and insight that we use." By applying the case method to business education, we break the boundaries of passive learning to encourage students to become active participants in their own progress. With each case, students empathize with a decision maker ("the protagonist"), analyze varied and frequently ambiguous data, and assume responsibility for an action plan that effectively resolves the case's business challenge.
   ____________________________________
nothing to see here

richard tedlow explains why so many
CEOs refuse to confront the truth.
by Matthew Budman

The smartest guy in the room - that's you,
right? It's easy to get tunnel vision and forget
that there might be opinions other than yours
or, more important, facts that don't support
your plans, And if you're like most powerful
people, you don't exactly encourage those
around you to debunk your projections and
theories.
   So when that threatening trend appears on
the horizon, or that report warns of impending
disaster, it's all too likely that you'll dismiss
it. In short, you're in denial, which business
historian Richard Tedlow defines as “the
unwillingness to see or admit to truth that
ought to be apparent and is in fact apparent
to many others.” Denial is the reason why
CEOs refuse to acknowledge key data points
and counterarguments and miss major societal
and consumer shifts; it's why they insist
that the direction in which the company is
heading is the way it SHOULD be heading.
   The result? You guessed it.
   Tedlow, the Harvard Business School's Class
of 1949 Professor of Business Administration,
recently discussed Denial: Why Business Leaders
Fail to Look Facts in the Face - and What To
Do About it (Portfolio). “There are cautionary
tales,” he says of his book, “but they're not
intended to make you overly cautious. They're
supposed to help you make rational choices
and take sane risks.”

... [...] ....

< DOESN'T EVERY CEO - OR PRESIDENT, FOR THAT MATTER -
INSIST THAT PEOPLE AROUND HIM NOT BE YES MEN?       >

Oh, they all say that. No one would say they want yes men, and
probably 50 per cent of CEOs even believe it. It does not matter.

< SO WHAT CAN A CEO DO? >

Ask yourself: Are discussions that take place in meeting dull
and happy, and are the really honest discussions the ones that
take place AFTER the meetings, when people secrete themselves
in their offices and say, “Can you believe this?” Is that where
the real animation is? That's a sign that nobody wants to speak
the truth in public, because it's not worth it.
   You've got to be a provocateur. You want people to be blunt
with you, so you have to find Cassandras, as Andy Grove used
to call them, and reward them. If you shoot the messenger,
everybody finds out immediately, and no one's ever going to
tell you the truth again. You're not going to be consciously in
denial, but you're never going to know what's really going on,
because you're going to be insulated with people whose only desire
is to please you. And if they discover that the best way to
please you is to tell you things that you may not want to hear
but that are true, that'll get through the organization as well.

< YOU ARGUE THAT PEOPLE NEED TO LOOK AT WHAT'S HAPPENED
HISTORICALLY, TO SEE MISTAKES MADE IN THE PAST. IS THERE
A RISK OF LOOKING TOO CLOSELY AT HISTORY AND REFUSING TO
TAKE ANY RISKS AT ALL, OR TO INNOVATE?                   >

I don't think that's the lesson of history. The lesson of history
is to take risks, but with your eyes open, and not think that
unsolvable problems will be solved by magic. The lesson of
history is to avoid magical thinking.

< OK, WE SHOULDN'T BELIEVE IN MAGIC, BUT AREN'T NUMBERS
EVER WRONG?                                           >

That's part of the problem: Under certain circumstances, denial
is really useful. Most business fail, so you have to be in denial
about YOUR new business - otherwise no one would ever found
a business. When you're facing a terminal illness, denial is
highly functional. My wife, when she was dying of cancer, at
one point said, “Let's declare this a disease-free weekend.” It
was an astonishing thing - both of us immediately went into
denial and acted that way.
   But most of the time, denial is deadly, and you have to fight
it. And that's difficult, because the truth hurts.

< IS REFUSING TO SEE THE WRITING ON THE WALL FUNDAMENTALLY
THE SAME THINGS AS FAILING TO SEE IT?                    >

The result can be the same, but I see a difference between
being wrong and being in denial. Sometimes you look the facts
in the face, you make a decision, and the decision doesn't work
out. That happens to everybody. Denial is the willingness to
acknowledge and deal with reality. It's the choice - sometimes
unconscious, sometimes semiconscious, sometimes willful -
to act as if facts are not facts. Everybody's wrong sometimes.
But not everybody is in denial. That is avoidable, and there are
lessons from history that can help you avoid it.
   When you look back, you see a lot of people denying facts
that are staring them right in the face. They don't want to believe
it, so they decide not to. And eventually it comes back, and
it costs them.

... [...] ....

< YOU ALSO TALK ABOUT HENRY FORD IN THE 1920S, CALLING IT
“THE STORY OF ONE MAN DENYING PLAIN, IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE
   THAT THE AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY WAS
   CHANGING. A RATIONAL CEO IN TOUCH WITH REALITY WOULD
   ACT ON THAT EVIDENCE. A CEO IN DENIAL WOULD NOT.” AREN'T
   THERE PLENTY OF EXAMPLES WHERE CEOs SAW WHAT THEY
   THOUGHT WAS PLAIN, IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE AND ACTED, BUT
   THEIR ACTIONS TURNED OUT TO BE BAD MOVES?                >

People do make mistakes. You weight evidence and make mistakes,
and that's life. But Henry Ford had evidence right in
front of him about the shrinking market for Model Ts: He
could look out the window and see Chevrolets; he got a memorandum
from his son's brother-in-law, laying out the facts;
a magazine published a chart showing that his market was
shrinking, since Model Ts were for first-time buyers
and more and more people owned cars. And Ford
simply denied it and denied it until people stopped
buying his cars and he had to shut down the River
Rouge plant, which cost him something like $200 million,
a fortune in 1927. That's different from weighing
the evidence and saying, “I'm choosing to go left
instead of right” when right would have been the
better choice.
   There's always risk in business, but there's a certain
kind of risk where you unilaterally disarm because
you refuse to look at reality - either willfully,
like Ford did, or unconsciously, because you can't stand the
,thought of it. Everybody makes mistakes, but this is a special
category of mistake. You have the facts in front of you, and you
don't bother to refute them - you just fire the guy who brought
them to you. Or you let your pride get in the way.

... [...] ....

< WITH MOST OF YOUR HISTORICAL EXAMPLES - SEARS, A&P,
FORD, EVEN INTEL - YOU POINT TO DIRE PROBLEMS THAT
THEIR CEOS REFUSED TO SEE, BUT THE COMPANIES CONTINUED
TO FLOURISH FOR YEARS OR EVEN DECADES. YOUR
MORE RECENT CASES SEEM TO BE HAPPENING MORE
QUICKLY.                                               >

You used to be able to get away with things for years, but not
anymore. It wasn't a state secret that General Motors had a
business model that was unsustainable, but they got through
thirty years, and only recently did they go bankrupt. We're living
in a more competitive world, a truly globalized environment,
with a lot of overcapacity. If you deny reality, you're going to
pay the price.

www.tcbreview.com

THE CONFERENCE BOARD REVIEW

filename: nothing-to-see-here-sp10.pdf
   ____________________________________
πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα

whatever reading room

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

success, end of growth, theory of disruption - c

Peter Senge on Science, Spirituality & Worldviews

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